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Our View: Families shouldn't wait a lifetime for justice

Carlsbad Current-Argus

Posted:
08/19/2013 10:17:34 PM MDT

Only two inmates sit on New Mexico's death row. While the details of their cases vary widely, earlier this month, attorneys for both men appealed their sentences on the grounds that the state abolished the death penalty in 2009.

Both appeals landed on the desk of District Judge Karen Townsend's desk on the same day and she denied them. And that, we think, was the right call.

Townsend dismissed the appeal for Bloomfield's Timothy Allen and Robert Fry, a notorious convicted serial killer from Farmington. Lawyers for both men wanted their clients to serve life in prison, rather than be put to death.

In 1995, Allen was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration of a 17-year-old. Fry was sentenced to death for the 2000 murder of a 36-year-old Shiprock woman. He has also been convicted of three other murders.

As long as they are competent, both men should be executed. A jury of their peers deliberated between a sentence of life in prison and death, and chose the latter. As maligned as jury duty often is, most jurors take the roles seriously. Second-guessing those decisions now, years later, is futile.

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New Mexico hasn't executed anyone since 2001. Between the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and its abolition in 2009, only Terry Clark, who was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 6-year-old from Roswell and raping and murdering a 9-year-old from Artesia, was executed.

In March 2009, the state legislature voted to abolish the death penalty. But that action wasn't retroactive, leaving just Fry and Allen on death row. Lawyers have argued that public opinion has shifted away from the pro-capital punishment attitudes of previous decades. That, they say, is enough of a reason for convicts on death row to see their sentences mitigated to life in prison. But that's not entirely accurate. A November 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of adults favored the death penalty for people convicted of murder, compared to 31 percent opposed.

Fry's and Allen's cases are far from over. Townsend's decision not to dismiss both men's death penalties will be automatically appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. At the end of the day -- barring new evidence or other breaks in their cases -- we hope the court honors the jury's decision.

Fry's lawyers unsuccessfully argued earlier this month that his sentence should be life without parole, stating in their motion that "it is repugnant to the federal and state constitution to allow this case to go forward with the death sentence intact, while persons who commit the same crimes on or after July 1, 2009, will be spared."

Actually, what's repugnant is to take away what little semblance of closure the victims' families have gleaned from knowing that Fry and Allen would face death. Repealing both men's death sentences not only flies in the face of justice, it also reopens wounds for those families.

The mother of the teenager Allen killed has said she wants to see the death sentenced carried out. Darlene Phillips says that Allen "went through the trial, and he went through the sentencing phase, and a jury of 12 decided this." She vows to watch his execution.

Thirteen years after Allen strangled her daughter with a rope, Darlene Phillips is still awaiting his death. To make her wait a lifetime is profoundly unfair.

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Farmington Daily Times.